A to C (Adaptational Badass | Anti-Frustration Features) | D to H | I to R (Luck-Based Mission) | S to Z
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D
- Damage-Sponge Boss: Raid Pokémon function like this, due to having a fixed 3,600 HP for Tier 3 raids, 9,000 HP for Tier 4 raids, 15,000 HP for Tier 5 raids, and 22,500 HP for Tier 6 raids, resulting in CP in the tens of thousands. To attempt to defeat a Tier 4 or above Raid alone is a nigh-impossible task. Raid Pokémon also do not telegraph their attacks, and given the tight time limit, a common strategy is to completely ignore dodging and simply bash it until it goes down. Most Tier 5 raids usually require at least 3 to 4 well-prepared players to take down, more if the players are unprepared.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- When tags were introduced in the Pokémon options menu, it ended up taking the spot of the oft-used Appraise button directly above Transfer. Needless to say, getting used to the Appraise button being in a different place in the menu was an uphill climb for many players. In fact, the change in button placement was so poorly received that a later update actually put the Appraise button back where it was before.
- Changing phones can result in this, as you can become acclimated at the throwing Pokéballs on one phone, only to have to unlearn and relearn how to do it on a new device, especially with a different screen size.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Due to the way gym battles work, the player's Pokémon can theoretically win against one far stronger so long as you can dodge every attack. One slip and your Pokémon is down, of course.
This also extends to gyms as a whole. Since the defending Pokémon's motivation goes down when defeated, it becomes easier to beat on the rematch, and any sufficiently persistent determinator with enough time (and revives) can simply chip away at the gym over and over again until it's taken down, not giving members of the team defending the Gym a chance to use Berries to recover their Pokémon's CP. - Developer's Foresight:
- The game doesn't record distance unless you're travelling under 15 mph, so riding in a car won't accumulate much distance. This is not to say there's no point at all — there are frequent stops in a city, after all — but highway travel will earn next to nothing.
- Zorua always appear on the map disguised as the player's buddy Pokémon, with it being revealed as a Zorua after being caught ala Ditto. If the player doesn't have a buddy Pokémon yet, however (which is only possible if a new player has yet to assign a Buddy yet) or if the player already has a Zorua as their Buddy, Zorua will simply appear on the map and catching screen as their normal selves.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- Curveballs. By spinning the Poké Ball before throwing, it will fly in an arc (usually, a diagonal one) instead of a straight line. If you land the throw, you get a "Curveball" bonus. This takes a lot of practice to get down correctly, especially on smaller devices, and different Pokémon need different aims, but mastering the technique is well worth the effort; a successful curveball carries a catch rate multiplier of 1.7. For comparison, Great Balls and Razz Berries are both 1.5, as is a "great" throw. The only things that give more of a bonus are the 1.8 from an "excellent" throw and the 2.0 of Ultra Balls. Curveballs also stack with all of these things. A curved great throw with a regular Poké Ball has a higher multiplier than just throwing an Ultra Ball.
- Double-legacy Mewtwo. The difficult part? The amount of resources you need to invest just to get this one are exorbitant: on top of catching the Mon itself (who only spawns on EX or level 5 raids during certain events) you need to harvest a huge amount of rare candies and stardust in order to unlock the secondary charged attacknote and invest two very rare Elite TMs in order to give it both Shadow Ball and Psystrike, two legacy moves only available in certain events. And on top of that, you need to invest even more stardust and candies in order to max it. The awesome part? Once all investments are in place, you get one of THE best Pokémon in the game, both for the GO Battle Master League and PvE, in one of those rare cases where a mon can excel in both areas with the same moveset.
- Double-legacy shadow Mewtwo takes it even further: while you can unlock the second attack, you must wait until a GO Rocket Event in order to rid it of Frustration. And since you get this mon after a Rocket Boss Battle, unlike mission mons or other hatches, it has no IV floor, so you must also have the luck of getting a Shadow Mewtwo with good IVs. Once everything is in place? On top of all the aforementioned benefits, you get the 20% attack bonus all Shadow Pokémon have.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- Downplayed. It's possible for low-level players to catch evolved Pokémon with CP several times higher than that of their average encounters (a Kingler with ~300 CP vs Krabby with only 50-100, for example). However, CP is based on level as well as species, so they still won't be nearly as strong as those caught by a high-level trainer.
- Beedrill and Pidgeot are relatively easy to raise because Weedle and Pidgey are so abundant, due to their Com Mon status. This goes for all evolvable Com Mons as well.
- Eevee: six out of Eevee's seven evolutions are considered strong enough to be viable even in high-level meta, despite being almost as common as Pidgey.
- Rhydon and Aggron count as well; Not only that these Pokémon are commonly seen in high levels, they are also quite strong and easy to evolve due to their abundance. However, despite being quite sturdy, they hit like a wet sponge, so it is ill-advised to use them at higher levels or abuse them in multiple copies.
- Ditto Fighter: Ditto, of course. Ditto will automatically copy the first Pokémon it fights, taking on the Pokémon's base stats and movepool adjusted to the Ditto's level (for example, a level 20 Ditto copying a level 30 Dragonite would become a level 20 version of that Dragonite). It will retain this disguise for as long as its in battle.
- Double Unlock:
- Several Poké require an additional step to evolve along with the usual required candy. Evolution stones are the most common and others require more esoteric methods such as winning several raids or walking a certain distance with the active Poké as your buddy.
- Upon reaching level 40, you're given a set of four tasks to complete before you're allowed to level up. You also still have to grind for experience points as well.
- The limited timed event at the end of 2020 rewarded players with a medal and a Gyarados Hat upon reaching level 40 and completing several research tasks.
- Drought Level of Doom: Low-density areas such as industrial parks and suburban neighborhoods tend to have a disproportionate number of spawn points in comparison to Poké Stops, meaning that it's easy to grind for stardust and experience points in these areas, but also easy to deplete one's supply of Poké Balls.
- Dual Boss: When you see a Meowth-shaped balloon in the sky, you'd best prepare for two battles, as Jessie and James fight you one after the other. Fortunately, their Shadow Pokémon are proportionally weakened, so you don't get shafted via being pummeled by a full team of six overpowered Pokémon. Just grab your Olympus Mons or Infinity -1 Mon and you're good to go.
- Dumb Muscle: Cliff, of GO Rocket, is enormous (easily twice the size of Arlo or Sierra, his compatriots), and very single-minded - instead of considering why he's working for a team he once despised, he signed on solely because they "saved" him, and talks a lot about brute-forcing the player.
E
- Early-Bird Cameo:
- On September 22, 2018, massive amounts of a never-before-seen Pokémon appeared worldwide for a brief period of time. Upon being caught, however, they would all turn out to be Ditto. Three days later, it was formally announced by Game Freak, and is called Meltan, a Steel-type Mythical Pokémon.
- Primal Groudon and Primal Kyogre's signature moves, Precipice Blades and Origin Pulse, were found in the code as far as the Gen III update, which means that Niantic was planning to add Mega Evolutions (and, according to a datamine for the August 2020 update, also Primal Reversions) nearly two years before they were announced.
- On November 5, 2022, shortly after the Special Community Day for Dratini ended, a new Pokémon began following players across the map after they received special coins from Pokestops that had turned yellow. The following day, Gimmighoul was revealed along with the game's cross-connection with Scarlet And Violet (a feature set to debut in 2023).
- Early Game Hell: Once you get past the first ten levels, making your way to level 20 is much more difficult, especially if you don't use real money for experience-boosting Lucky Eggs. Though you can get free coins by dropping Pokémon into gyms your teammates have conquered, capturing enemy gyms or participating in raids will be frustrating as most other players will likely be using Pokémon at least twice as strong as your own. Things get easier once the player grinds enough candy to fully evolve some of their Pokémon and start adding higher-CP Pokémon to their battle roster. Unlocking Pinap Berries at level 18 and Ultra Balls at level 20 further aids this process.
- Easter Egg:
- When you first start the game and are given the opportunity to catch one of the three Kanto starters. If you continuously walk away from them, they will eventually respawn with a Pikachu as a fourth starter option, as a nod to Pokémon Yellow.
- There's a way to guarantee the Eevee evolution you want; nickname your Eevee "Sparky" for Jolteon, "Pyro" for Flareon, "Rainer" for Vaporeon, "Sakura" for Espeon, "Tamao" for Umbreon, "Rea" for Glaceon, "Linnea" for Leafeon and "Kira" for Sylveon. The first three are the same names as the three trainers who owned each of the three original Eeveelutions from the Pokemon anime episode "The Battling Eevee Brothers", while the fourth and fifth are the names of two of the five Kimono Sisters who each owned an Eeveelution from the anime episodes "Trouble's Brewing" and "Espeon, Not Included". The latter three are based off two notable post-game trainers in seventh-generation core-series games. Niantic themselves confirmed this method works.
- If you have a Pikachu as your buddy Pokémon and you walk 10km with it, it will sit on your shoulder on the profile screen. Same occurs if you have Eevee as your walking buddy.
- If you throw a Poké Ball at a Kangaskhan and it lands near the pouch, it'll land inside it next to her joey instead of capturing her.
- Egg MacGuffin: When a Gym is slated to have a Raid Boss appear at it soon, an egg appears at the Gym with a timer counting down to the egg hatching. Beating whatever's within is an easy ticket to rare items, such as Golden Razz Berries and TMs, and a chance for a Pokémon encounter with stronger IVs.
- Encounter Bait: The Incense and Lure Module items attracts Pokémon to the user and a Poké Stop respectively for 30 minutes. Pokémon drawn by Incense are exclusive to the player, while Lures work for all players.
- Endless Daytime: Hoopa's pressence casts a permanent Alien Sky in the overworld, eliminating the day/night cycle alltogether and casting eternal light upon the ground.
- Enemy Mine:
- Players from two different teams can work together to topple a gym held by the third team. However, only one team can hold the gym after it reverts to neutral, so they'll probably end up fighting each other for control over it afterward.
- A straighter example is Raid Battles, where any player of any alignment can work together to destroy the Raid Boss Pokémon.
- In the storyline, all three Team Leaders are attempting to hunt down and track Giovanni's Go Rocket - it's reflected during Rocket events, wherein the objective is to beat as many Rocket goons as possible.
- Enough to Go Around: A large number of players can all work together to fight a single Pokemon in a Raid Battle. If they all win together, each individual is given a chance to catch it, with everyone getting their own copy to catch.
- Exergaming: Some of the game's features, such as hatching eggs and even gaining experience, are tied to how far you walk. Eggs hatch after walking anywhere from 2 to 10 kilometers, and there are medals for walking certain distances. The game stops counting distance when you go over about 15mph, though, so trying to cheat with a car won't get you much of anything.
- The Adventure Sync feature lets the game take data from your fitness apps while it's inactive, letting you progress egg hatching. You get additional rewards for meeting certain distance milestones each week.
- Exact Words:
- A Remote Raid Pass is a raid pass that can be used to join a raid remotely. Arriving at a raid but only have a remote pass? Sorry, you have to walk away from the gym until you're, well, remote, in order to join the raid. Or buy a regular pass.
- Research tasks often have to be done exactly how they're described. If you have to spin PokéStops, you must spin them by hand rather than use the Pokémon Go Plus to collect the rewards from it.
- In tasks where you have to catch Pokémon, only catches count. Hatching, trading, or evolving do not count for these quests.
- If you're tasked to defeat Rocket grunts, they have to be grunts. Leaders don't count.
- Works in the player's favor in "Use X berries" or "Make X of Y type throws" research requests. Those do not require a successful catch - if a player happens to have such a quest when they encounter something that's difficult to catch (like if they've just cleared a Tier 5 raid), it's fairly common to complete these quests on just the one encounter after it breaks out of several successful throws. Some people even seek them out for this purpose.
- GO Battle Weekends usually have Timed Research requiring you to compete in a large number of battles. Some players choose to finish them by bringing the weakest Pokémon they can, so that they lose in five seconds and can immediately start another battle. After all, you don't need to win the battles.
- Experience Booster: The Lucky Egg item doubles experience gained for 30 minutes.
F
- Fake Difficulty:
- If the color of the target circle is very similar to the color of the Pokémon, it can be very difficult to see what you're supposed to be aiming at.
- Mons that are very far away on the screen can be tricky to catch if your screen is too small—it's extremely difficult just to throw the ball far enough, to say nothing of actually hitting the tiny target.
- Raid bosses with a sole single weakness to ground, most notably ones of pure Electric typing are of such, as ground type moves, particularly the ubiquitous Earthquake, are notorious for their extremely slow speed that they are often amounting to Scratch Damage against these raid bosses. It is further compounded when the raid boss in question has a very high defense stat such as Jolteon or Raikou, which can make the raid borderline impossible to deal with minimal players save for a select few Legendary Pokémon.
- Fake Longevity:
- Some Special Research questlines have tasks where you have to catch a Pokémon or spin a Pokéstop at least once every day for X days in a row, which just prolongs the time it takes to complete the questline without adding any challenge.
- The Ultra Hero medal requires you to defeat the Team GO Rocket boss Giovanni a set number of times. Bronze requires just one victory. For a silver medal you have to do it 5 times, and for gold 20 times. The catch? You can only battle Giovanni once a month. Getting silver is bad enough at almost half a year, but gold takes one year and 8 months to earn.
- Fake Ultimate Mook: Slaking defending Gyms looks intimidating with its massive CP, but the way the AI handles its attacks (using moves at a set rhythm rather than as fast as possible) means that it slowly does Scratch Damage with its intentionally pathetic fast move and very occasionally unleashes a much stronger charge move. By the time it's done actual damage, the player would most likely have run through most of its health bar.
- Fanservice: The already attractive player avatars were given costume options in the form of the "Jogger" outfit—the female avatar gets a tight midriff baring top, the male gets a tight sleeveless shirt, and both of them get short shorts.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Teams have the Legendary birds of Kanto as their mascots — Articuno for Team Mystic, Zapdos for Team Instinct, and Moltres for Team Valor. As with the core games, there are trios such as Magmar, Jynx, and Electabuzz also available in the game.
- In PvP Ultra League training, each team leader uses an Eeveelution corresponding on its type. Blanche uses a Glaceon, Candela uses a Flareon and Spark uses a Jolteon.
- Fission Mailed:
- An unintentional example. Due to how the internet connection and servers are handled differently in certain conditions, a player may experience wild Pokémon encounters escape due to interrupted connection, only to find them caught in their own bag. Their journal also lists them being caught instead of fleeing, as a result.
- A straighter example happens during the Sleeping Snorlax event, as a Sleeping Snorlax, as opposed to being operated by the typical Catch Rate rule, is scripted to break out of two ball captures before being caught on the third ball capture.
- Flashmob: Many Raids, at least in highly populated areas and especially high-tier raids, almost require this. A Raid consists of a co-op Boss Battle against a stronger-than-normal Pokémon at a random gym. While Tier 1 and Tier 2 raids can be completed alone, higher-tier raids require multiple players. Tier 5 raids in particular (which contains the rarest and strongest boss Pokémon) essentially enforce this trope, requiring at least 6 players to complete. While legendary Pokémon raids often manage to draw together enough players by themselves, it's common practice to coordinate through chat groups such as Discord and Facebook groups, sometimes bringing 20+ or even 30+ players together. In high-activity places such as Hong Kong and Singapore, cooperation is not even needed as players will automatically swarm to the raid.
- Another example is during every time that a new Pokémon wave appears, lots of people will be swarming to areas where a high rarity Pokémon spawns in hopes of registering them to their Pokédex. Out of new waves, this will still occur if any 100IV specimen spawns, especially if they are shiny eligible or have high rarity value.
- Flying Seafood Special: Goldeen, Tentacool, and many other water-type swimming Pokémon are portrayed as floating in mid-air on ground, both with AR mode on and off. Averted with Magikarp, of course, which just flops around uselessly, but justified with its evolution, Gyarados, for being part Flying-type.
- Freudian Trio: The teams' philosophies.
- Team Valor believes in training Pokémon using raw strength, emotions, and passion, making them the Id.
- Team Mystic believes in using logic and intellect in training Pokémon, making them the Superego.
- Team Instinct doesn't favor either emotions or logic, instead relying on their own instincts, making them the Ego.
G
- Game-Breaking Bug:
- The game can be very processor-intensive on low-end devices, as it simultaneously puts a good deal of pressure on the graphics while using the GPS, with the option of using the camera and gyroscope in the AR Mode. As a result, extended periods of play can cause the game to lag heavily, especially if the game has to load a large amount of map data. Given enough time, this can render the game unplayable until you reset it.
- The 0.51.0 update results in the game becoming completely unplayable at odd times (the map doesn't load, and nothing else is selectable), likely due to the changes made to the day-and-night system. Closing and reopening the app can fix this, but not always.
- When you successfully dodge an attack, your Pokémon will take the full damage, and then the game automatically adjusts this so that it takes partial damage, instead. If the undodged damage is enough to make the Pokémon faint, the game will switch it and the next Pokémon in the party in and out, not understanding which should be out and whether the first Pokémon should've fainted. A variant of the "dodge glitch" that can happen if there is only one player battling involves too much dodging and a "shadow" charged move from the raid Pokémon that comes out of nowhere. The enemy Pokémon can even seemingly regenerate HP from such an attack.
- Attempting to use a Pokémon Go Plus while the app is running in the background can be problematic as the app itself has a very high chance of closing in the background if a different app is loaded, forcing you to re-launch the game.
- The update that coincided with the Pokémon Detective Pikachu promotion caused the game to go completely haywire with countless apparently random bugs, errors, and glitches. While some glitches were innocuous like Pokémon looking like they had been run through a paper shredder when in gyms
, the camera in the gym flying around randomly when trying to feed Berries, or Pokémon spotaneously morphing into other Pokémon after being caught (at least when the Pokémon went from a Com Mon to a more desirable mon such as Aerodactyl or Chansey), others were bad enough that many players quit playing the game until they could be fixed. Some of these worse bugs include the wrong Pokémon being transferred when transferring mons, the game suddenly being a lot more of a battery drain than usual, the random inability to get anything besides standard items like normal Poké Balls from Pokéstops, Lucky Pokémon costing MILLIONS of Stardust to power up, and the aforementioned spontaneous morphing bug due to it also causing players to lose out on strong or even Legendary Pokémon from Raids or Research Tasks due to them morphing into less desirable mons. In the newest version, most of these were mitigated. - Tapping on a Pokémon the moment it disappears from the map or the Pokémon despawns as the camera is panning down to it may soft-lock the game since the hud has disappeared and input has been disabled in anticipation of the encounter starting. However, since the Pokémon is not there, the encounter will never start and simply hang on the overworld, rejecting all input (or, less commonly, the game will attempt to start the encounter anyway but then freeze midway through the Fade to White transition), forcing a restart.
- One that can become particularly frustrating is that the game will hang during a Team GO Rocket fight if a Double Knockout happens. This will happen regardless of how many Pokémon either side has left, and a restart will treat it as a loss for the player. If Team GO Rocket manages to cause this by using their last Pokémon to knock out the player when the player still has reserves left, this can cause a Rage Quit.
- Falinks ended up creating many oddities within the game due to their Non-Standard Character Design (a group of six waddling heads marching in a perfectly straight line), such as going past the UI in menu screens and causing the camera to become confused in gym battles, but most critical was their raids in the Ultra Unlock Week 3 event being completely broken. The game would either crash upon trying to load the raid or the graphics would go completely nuts. Niantic was forced to cancel all Falinks raids shortly after their debut and compensated by having them spawn more often in the wild for the event they debuted in.
- Gameplay and Story Integration:
- Later GO Fests are explicitly in-universe celebrations thrown by Professor Willow and the Leaders instead of just being the game's annivesary quest. It also explains away Pokemon Legends showing up to Fests; in one case, Team Rocket was planning on demonstrating their Shadow Legendaries by attacking the massed trainers.
- Partially to make sure players (especially kids) aren't wandering the streets at night, the game doesn't allow Rocket Leaders to spawn after local sundown. Trying to activate a Rocket Radar will have your Team Leader contact you to note the Rockets have gone dark for the night, and to try again tomorrow.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Because of the game's algorithm for spawning, more Pokémon will spawn in areas with more people playing the game. This means that crowded cities will have a greater volume of Pokémon than rural areas, and areas where there is no cell reception like caves and mountains won't have any - the opposite of what Pokemon and Go itself have, with more powerful mons the further you are out in the sticks.
- The December 2017 update added "Extreme" weather alerts claiming "Pokémon seem to dislike these conditions", the effect of which reduces weather-related spawns and attack boosts. Putting aside the real-world aspect (it's intended to discourage playing outside in harsh weather), the exact opposite is true from an in-game perspective, as within the lore of the mainline Pokémon games outside of Go, there are species that can withstand (and are even found in) extreme conditions. This was later removed in an update launched in January 2018, which now allow appropriate Pokémon to spawn during Extreme weather.
- Some spawn points are technically in, as opposed to next to, bodies of water. Fortunately for all of those Geodude, Rhyhorn, and other very heavy Pokémon (and the trainers that want to catch them), they do not immediately sink beyond a player's reach upon spawning there.
- Due to the nature of how research quests get assigned, you can sometimes get a quest that canonically happens after other quests. For example, the premise of the Ultra Recon Squad special research quests are that Professor Willow has gone missing and you are teaming up with them to help find him. Regardless, Willow still shows up in other quests and aspects of the game like nothing out of the ordinary has happened.
- Gender Bender: Raichu's initial character model was female, as evidenced by the fact that the tip of its tail was flat rather than pointed. Pikachu, on the other hand, used the male character model, lacking the heart-shaped tip that distinguishes the female version. Thus, any time Pikachu evolved into Raichu, it would be changing gender as well as form. This was corrected in a later update, changing Raichu's model to the male version.
- Glass Cannon: Shadow Pokémon, obtained from Rocket grunts, are this if you choose not to purify them. They do 20% more damage but also take 20% more damage, making them riskier to use but devastating in the right situations. The most extreme case is Victreebel, whose Shadow form can chew through a Swampert or Whiscash, which have a double weakness to Grass, with 5 Razor Leafs (a fast attack) alone.
- Gotta Catch Them All:
- The regional Pokédex medals: Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, Unova, Galar, Kalos. The tiers of these medals are earned by registering a certain number of Pokédex entries for each respective region. To reach the Platinum tier, the entire regional Pokédex of the respective medal have to be completed, including all applicable Legendary and Mythical Pokémons (151 for Kanto, 100 for Johto, and so on).
- The Unown medal, based on number of unique forms of Unown caught. The Platinum tier requires all 28 forms of Unown to be caught.
- Guide Dang It!:
- The game doesn't explain the purpose of the circles that appear when you're preparing to toss a Poké Ball at a wild Pokémon, specifically the colored circle inside the white target circle, which shrinks as you hold the ball. The color of the circle determines how likely you are to catch the Pokémon. Green usually works on the first try, while yellow, orange, and red represent an increasing likelihood that the Pokémon will break free. You're more likely to catch the Pokémon if the colored circle is smaller when the ball hits, and if the ball hits within that circle. This is deemed a "Nice", "Great", or "Excellent" throw depending on the size of the circle and earns a small XP bonus. You can also spin the ball using your finger to throw a curveball, which gives an XP bonus if you do it right.
- There's no section in the game telling you anything about weaknesses and resistances. This can easily cause a bunch of players going into a legendary raid and using the default selection and time out even if there are supposedly slightly more than the minimum amount of players that can beat it. This is because that the autoselect more often than not contains inappropriate Pokémon for that specific raid boss, such as Aggron against Latios or Tyranitar with two Rock-Type moves against Giratina. Furthermore, since the game uses all of the typings up to later generations (including the Fairy type introduced in Gen 6), many people who stopped caring about the Pokémon franchise before Generation 6 (which introduced the type) won't know why their Machamp or Primeape cannot beat either Clefables or Wigglytuffsnote .
- When you actually enter a gym battle for the first time, it can be a rather Unexpected Gameplay Change since there's really no battling before this. Battling consists of tapping on your opponent to attack with your basic movie, while a "Charge Meter" charges up to allow your Pokémon to use a more powerful move. Swiping allows dodging. None of this is explained to you upon your first battle, neither is there any sort of training mode to try out your Pokémon's moves before challenging a gym.
- There is a way to get Pikachu as your starter, but the game never tells you how.
- The game doesn't tell you that you need to flip your device sideways to reap the benefits of battery saver.
- Players discovered a 100% sure-fire way to evolve your Eevee into whatever you want it to be. You have to name them "Sparky", "Pyro", or "Rainer" to get a Jolteon, Flareon, and Vaporeon, respectively. Also, make sure you exit the app and relaunch after changing the name to ensure that it went through to the server. For the Gen 2 Eeveelutions, you have to name your Eevee "Sakura" or "Tamao" for Espeon and Umbreon. For Gen 4, "Rea" gets Glaceon and "Linnea" gets Leafeon. For Gen 6, "Kira" gets Sylveon.
- Incense works by generating Pokémon at your location, at a rate of one every five minutes (so about five overall). However, you can double or even triple that amount if you jog at least 200 meters between spawns, which ups the spawn rate to about one per minute.
- Remember IVs from the main games? Surprise, they're present in this game and just as cryptic. Pokémon have three hidden stats — Attack, Defense, and Stamina — which all factor into a function that determines its final CP as well as its HP. And just like in the main games, you have no control over whether that high CP 'mon you're catching has good stats or not. The Elite Tweak factor is less pronounced, though, due to the lack of EVs, and the difference between a 'mon with perfect IVs and an average 'mon is about 10% additional damage in battles. Later updates added and refined the appraisal feature, letting you have a better idea of the parameters without needing the assistance of a third party program, and later the appraisal cryptic messages were replaced with a three-section bar for attack, defense and health which made a lot of third-party programs obsolete.
- If you get your buddy in the best possible mood, the maximum amount of hearts it can earn that day will double. The problem is that the method is only vaguely hinted at in the game's hints, and it's easier to just feed them a Poffin to get them excited.
H
- Hand Wave: Legendary Pokémon can't be used to defend gyms as the game states they have Undying Loyalty to their trainer. However, they can still be transferred to the professor (just with an extra warning), making that explanation especially flimsy. The only Pokémon exempt from this rule are Meltan and Melmetal.
- Hard Mode Perks: The AR+ mode which expands further through the regular AR mode. The Pokémon is hidden around after the player clicks it on map, requiring the player to tap on the moving bushes to catch it, and it adds a warning bubble that requires players to have some patience to avoid getting it filled. Successfully reaching them in slow pace gives you "Expert Handler" bonus reward with extra XP and Stardust after they're caught in time, but reaching them quickly will net you a Non-Standard Game Over.
- Hate Sink: The Decoy Grunts' dialogue is filled with snark aimed at the player if they're discovered while searching for Giovanni.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]:
- As in every Pokémon game, you can nickname your Pokémon. However, unlike most Pokémon games including Mystery Dungeon spinoffs, you can rename your Pokémon at any time, resulting in users taking the concept and running wild. Due to privacy, however, nicknames do not appear when viewing other players' Pokémon in Gyms, instead showing the default species name.
- Using/abusing the appraisal function to let the team leaders say weird, obscene, etc. things, because how players nicknamed their Pokémon.
- Hitbox Dissonance:
- If you're riding a vehicle while playing, trying to tap a freshly-spawned Pokémon or a nearby Poké Stop can be hit or miss, since the app will cause your character to jump forward in bursts as it tries to keep your location updated. For safety reasons, it's impossible to spin stops at all when you're going above a certain speed, even if you're within distance.
- While it's rare, it's possible for Pokémon to spawn directly on top of one another. Often tapping the Pokémon that appears front-and-center will instead start a capture sequence with the Pokémon behind or under it.
- What counts as part of a Pokémon's hitbox when a Poké Ball is tossed differs between species; the wings of a Zubat register hits, but not, say, the fins of a Goldeen.
- The capture circle and the hitbox of the Pokémon can be vastly different. Some have a large target circle, but their actual hitboxes are so far away that on smaller devices you may have trouble even throwing the Poké Ball far enough to land a hit. On others, the hitbox can be be larger than the circle, making it difficult to land an accurate throw. For many other Pokémon, especially smaller species, part of the circle can clip through the ground and disrupt your throw if you aim too low.
- An oversight resulted in Glameow infamously debuting with a ridiculously large hitbox about three times its size that made it extremely easy to accidentally click in the overworld (and very annoying if in a large crowd of other Pokémon), and able to be caught in a Pokéball even if you missed it by a mile.
- Holiday Mode:
- In general, holidays and other events grant various increased rewards, such as double experience, stardust, or candy, as well as special boxes in the in-game store featuring bundled discounts.
- Around Halloween, the game increases the spawn rates of "spooky" Pokémon (such as Gastly, Zubat, and Misdreavus), and doubles the amount of candy earned for any action. The 2017 version was also the debut of Sableye, Shuppet, and Duskull (and their shiny forms) as well as a Pikachu wearing a witch hat.
- For Thanksgiving, experience and Stardust earned was doubled across the board. In 2016 this was issued automatically alongside the release of Ditto, while in 2017 the rewards were unlocked as part of a Global Catch Challenge for catching 3 billion Pokémon globally, culminating in the temporary worldwide release of Farfetch'd.
- December features another special Pikachu, this one wearing a Santa hat. The 2016 event also featured the release of the game's first "baby" Pokémon (Igglybuff, Pichu, Clefa, Magby, Elekid, Togepi, and Smoochum), while 2017 marked the first appearance of the seasonal Pokémon Delibird. 2018 made Ice types (Jynx, Sneasel, Delibird, Snorunt, Spheal and Snover) spawn more often alongside Stantler and introduced the shiny form of Delibird.
- Valentine's Day sees an increase in the spawn rates for pink Pokémon (such as Jigglypuff, Clefairy, Slowpoke, Exeggcute, Chansey, and Porygon), and in 2018, the holiday debuted the shiny form of Luvdisc.
- Easter is celebrated with an "Eggstravaganza" event, giving out eggs with a greater variety of rare species and awarding double candy for each egg hatched. 2018 added shiny forms for the baby Pokémon Magby, Togepi, and Wynaut.
- The game celebrates the anniversary of the franchise as a whole in February and of Pokémon Go in July, with a Pikachu wearing a party hat or Ash Ketchum's hat respectively.
- 2017 featured periodic events boosting the spawn rates for a particular type of Pokémon, such as a Water Festival for Water types or Adventure Week for Rock types. In 2018, this was replaced by a monthly Community Day, where one specific Pokémon would have its spawn rate massively increased for a three-hour period, with an exclusive move and shiny form available as well.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Players participating in a raid with a Remote Raid Pass will have their trainer avatar displayed as an occasionally flickering hologram in the lobby.
- Hostile Show Takeover:
- Days after the Team Go Rocket update, the faction seized control over the official Pokémon GO Twitter for several hours. Hilarity ensued as they proceeded to post about how Evil Feels Good and roast the playerbase.
- For Pokémon GO Fest 2020, Team GO Rocket hijacked the event on its second day, causing Grunts to appear more often at Poké Stops and guaranteeing you will see a Leader's balloon hovering above you at all times.
- Hypocrite: Arlo, of Team GO Rocket, constantly seethes at the player for being presumptuous, egotistical, entitled, et cetera. He's a spoiled brat who turned on his best friend for not getting his way and constantly speechifies about how he deserves Pokémon for his destiny.
